Christy by Request — A Bridge Too Far

Sean Connery. Gene Hackman. Anthony Hopkins. Michael Caine. Ryan O’Neal. James Caan. Laurence Olivier. Elliott Gould. Robert Redford. And — eventually — Liv Ullmann.

It would seem impossible to go wrong with such an incredible, all-star cast — which makes “A Bridge Too Far” such a frustrating misfire (no pun intended).

This 1977 World War II drama is the latest in my “Christy by Request” review series. It’s the suggestion of @stephenmalovski, a Twitter follower of mine from Macedonia, who recommended it for its suspense and historical accuracy. He even compared it to “Dunkirk,” one of my favorite movies of 2017. Sure, it’s three hours long. But I was not going to be daunted. That’s the movie title Nicolas had selected randomly — and I had to admit, I’d never seen it before — so that’s what I was going to watch.

The late, great actor and director Richard Attenborough (“Gandhi,” “Cry Freedom”) tells the story of Operation Market Garden, a failed Allied attempt to capture a series of bridges connecting Germany and the Netherlands in September 1944. The most important of these is in the small, Dutch town of Arnhem. The aforementioned superstars play the military leaders from various countries in charge of carrying out this plan, which requires thousands of troops and relies on precise timing.

“All we need now are three days of clear skies,” British Lt. Gen. Frederick Browning (Dirk Bogarde) assures his colleagues, coolly and confidently. “Only the weather can stop us now.” But the men speak amongst themselves of their doubts about the mission, building an early tension.

Unfortunately, that tension slowly dissipates as the film drags on and on, just as it should be steadily increasing. Attenborough’s film is a big, old-fashioned war epic — earnest, straightforward and solidly made, with hundreds of extras, impressive fleets of military aircraft and a rousing score. But the script from the usually great William Goldman (“Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid,” “All the President’s Men” “The Princess Bride”), based on Cornelius Ryan’s book, is simultaneously voluminous and superficial, offering little for the film’s staggeringly accomplished cast to work with beyond thin types.

Caine, as Lt. Col. J.O.E. Vandeleur of the Irish Guards, is jovial and wisecracking. Hopkins, as British Lt. Col. John Frost, glibly asks whether his golf clubs are packed before everyone heads out. Americans like Caan and Gould simply swagger — except for O’Neal, who’s annoyingly whiny. Hackman is among those who gets it the worst of all: As Polish Major Gen. Stanislaw Sosabowski, he literally makes a Polish joke the first time we see him.

Once all these characters are introduced, they’re amassed in a giant room with their troops to receive their assignments.

“Gentlemen, this is a story you’ll tell your grandchildren — and mightily bored they’ll be,” British Lt. Gen. Horrocks (Edward Fox) says with a smile and a twinkle in his eye. But he could have been talking about the movie as a whole.

Technically, “A Bridge Too Far” is impressive, especially in its sound design. The noisy thrum of planes overhead as Dutch villagers try to enjoy a peaceful Sunday morning church service provides an eerie feeling of dread. Later, in the movie’s many battle scenes, Attenborough and his team overwhelm us with gunfire, explosions and screams of pain, all of them visceral.

He vividly conveys the chaos and fog of war — the death and destruction — in individual, scattered scenes without much driving momentum. Fire, smoke, confusion and panic are all part of a massive battle just one hour in — and the bombs just keep on coming. Conversely, the ethereal calm of paratroopers dropping over Holland has an unexpected beauty about it, like thousands of jellyfish floating through cloudy skies. There’s a rhythm to the clatter as they jump, one by one, into the unknown.

But “A Bridge Too Far” eventually ends up feeling repetitive and overlong as it covers the same territory over and over.  Things do pick up, though, when Robert Redford shows up as one of the last pieces of the puzzle about two hours in as American Maj. Julian Cook, just because he’s so damn charismatic. He’s also the central figure in one of the film’s truly tense later scenes, a frantic and ill-fated river crossing. (Redford’s introduction also provides the brief but amusing sight of a pre-“Cheers” John Ratzenberger, who gets exactly one line: “Major,” he asks Redford, “we got any more information on those boats?”)

There’s also woefully little of the legendary Olivier and Ullmann, who are relegated to one of the least developed subplots. He’s a Dutch doctor; she’s a mother who agrees to open up her spacious home as a makeshift hospital for the countless wounded. (The luminous Ullmann also is the only woman with any significant speaking part.)

But these two members of acting royalty do figure prominently in the film’s final moments, as well as its last shot, which is striking. By the end, they’re clearly spent. And so are we.

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  1. Mick Martin & Marsha Porter’s DVD & Video Guide disagrees with you giving A Bridge Too Far three and a half stars. It is basically a guy movie that most women do not like at all. I have seen the movie several times also giving the it three and a half stars. The uncut version runs 175 minutes making it almost three hours long. When I watch the movie on DVD, I take a 15 minute break about halfway through the movie then watch the rest of it.

    • Well first of all, if that were true, if only guys appreciate this movie, then why are we asking Christy to review it. Second, I’m not sure I’m buying that suggestion. I’m a guy and after reading the plot synopsis on Wikipedia, I really had no interest in giving it a whirl, especially with the self-indulgent three hour run-time. Third, if war movies turn girls off, then why did Christy love Dunkirk so much (as we all probably did). Fourth, I like your approach of taking a 15 minute break in the middle to rebalance yourself, that’s a sound policy.

  2. Well.., we just have to agree we disagree here… I simply believe that the film is underrated.

    You know Roger Ebert also disliked this film and I have also always disagreed with his review!

    I rewatched A Bridge Too
    Far today on a fine sunday afternoon and I enjoyed it and didn’t felt that my time was spent and the three hours always seem to fly by as I didn’t felt spent during the previous times I have watched the film.
    I mostly say that because this film while taking some artistic liberties it depict the whole Operation Market Garden the way it happened and it’s worth watching for that… To honor the soldiers who gave their life to liberate Europe from the nazis and to learn their story.

    I admit that the film has flaws but I also think that the tension is there with the crossing of every bridge and the doomed march of the 30th corp to releave the paratroopers in Arnhem!

    It also feel that it really has many similarities with Dunkirk

    – Both films are about the biggest WWII military disasters

    – Both films have multiple storylines and are somewhat lacking in character development

    – Both film tend to depict war in a very realistic way

    – Both films are not about any heroic act by individuals but about representing the army as a whole

    I think that A Bridge Too Far is a good film and among the better war movies but I also agree that it is long and has a great film hiding in there.

    • I agree with you, Stephen Malovski. This is one war movie only the guys will fully appreciate. And, for an awesome battle the British fought on the high seas during World War II, I highly recommend the 1960 film Sink The Bismarck starring Kenneth More and Dana Wynter.

    • “I simply believe that the film is underrated.”

      You say that as if somewhere in the heavens, there’s a stone tablet with the heavens with the ‘true’ rating of all movies written, and if our mortal opinions diverge from that tablet, we are remiss in our taste and judgement. Since we don’t have access to such a tablet, you pretty well have to survey the critical scene and get a consensus view.

      The interesting part is how this will change over time often. When The Force Awakens came out nearly every critic recommend you go out and see it, but once the hype died down, people realized what a clone job it was of A New Hope. Once their giddy excitement of seeing a new Star Wars movie faded, they were left staring at a totally medicore, unsatisfying installment from maybe the hackiest director working today, J.J. Abrams.

      On the other hand, Kubrick’s films are often met with highly polarized responses, many of them negative, but as the years roll on, more and more people come around to appreciate just how magnificent they are. Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut being the best examples. Now that it’s 2018, if you still have a dim view of either of these, your taste and judgement and psychological development is highly suspect, I would say.

  3. There are only so much basic storylines, maybe 7 or 9, so films have always and will always borrow of each other so its very difficult if not impossible not to compare them one to another!

    There’s probably a list of great movies that ruined Hollywood and most notable among them are Jaws, The Exorcist, Star Wars, Raiders Of The Lost Ark and Double Indemnity.
    These films were so groundbreaking in their perspective genres that practically made many aspiring filmmakers to give up originality and copy them!
    To the modern viewers that are over saturated with cheap jumpscares horror films, the movies like Jaws or The Exorcist will look like they’re filled with cliches and repetitive, while Double Imdemnity will be just another noar filled with the usual plot of the unfaithful wife or husband that desperately want to convince the lover to kill his/her spouse for the insurance!
    How many cheap knockoffs are there to Star Wars and Raiders Of The Lost Ark?
    But Star Wars and Raiders never really suffered from that unlike the other films I mentioned.

    To really enjoy classic films you have to transport your mind in the past and forget the films that borrowed from them otherwise they will seem like slow, repetitive and filled with boring cliches.

    In other cases you have film that borrow from older releases that are probably underrated and not as popular removing the negative points while adding some originality and render themselves superior to their inspiration.
    One of these examples is Avatar… an other is Dunkirk…

    There’s many similarities between A Bridge Too Far and Dunkirk among which similar storytelling style,characterization and visual style.
    So to write a fair review to any film you have to judge the film for it’s own merits and there has to be a comparation between the movie and the source inspiration to unearth the proper value

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